Turning from this scene of horrors, hardened as I then was, I went with a comrade, to look for a house where we might obtain refreshment and take up our quarters for the night. This, after some search, we found in the domicile of a doctor, whom we took from under a bed clasped in the arms of a very pretty girl whom he called his niece, like himself, almost Distill’d to jelly with th’ effect of fear! This, however, we soon dispelled, and were rewarded for our pains with a good supper crowned by a bowl of excellent punch that at the time, in our own minds, compensated for all the sufferings we had endured in the trenches during the siege. The next morning I was anxious to visit the left breach, to look for the body of Wilkie. I found him, at length, cold and stiff, the bullet having entered his breast close under the left shoulder. He was stripped! But I easily distinguished him by the likeness he bore to his sister; old times then burst vividly over my recollection, and as I stood over his prostrate remains, a few moments brought to mind all the scenes in which he had been so active a coadjutor, my quondam recruit, bed-fellow, press-man, and pot companion, lay stretched before me clotted and besmeared with his blood, a single drop of which, at one time, was even more valued by me than the whole of my own more lucky current. The remembrance of his sister, much as my profession had tended to wipe her off my mind, now resumed its almost pristine freshness; my eyes dimmed for a second, and perchance one solitary proof of my weakness might have left its scalding course behind it, but I felt only as a soldier, a momentary sorrow, for I held my own life as it were in my hand, ready to part with it, at even a moment’s notice, and I presumed as much of all belonging to me. The proceeds of the storming “business” had enabled me to gain over a few half drunken soldiers, who had been staggering near me stupidly staring at my anxiety. We buried poor Wilkie in the glacis, near the breach, the whole wreck around us displaying the veriest monument ever reared to the memory of a soldier! I now proceeded to the right breach, which had been carried by the third division, where the mine had been sprung. The sight exhibited was heart-rending in the extreme. The dead lay in heaps, numbers of them stripped, and displaying the most ghastly wounds. Here and there, half-buried under the blackened fragments of the wall, or reeking on the surface of the ruin, lay those who had been blown up in the explosion, their remains dreadfully mangled and discoloured, and strewed about amongst dissevered arms and legs. The 88th, or Connaught Rangers, had suffered most severely at this spot, and I observed a number of poor Irish women hopelessly endeavouring to distinguish the burnt features of their husbands.